Deborah Segun

Firmly rooted in her personal experiences, Deborah Segun’s work celebrates the diverse bodies of women through shape and color, portraiture and narrative, creating an important counter-point to both art historical and contemporary depictions of the female form. The artist articulates the language of abstraction and more specifically the visual vocabulary of cubism to narrate the stories of her subjects which seem at once powerful and vulnerable. Her canvases are populated by the figures of voluptuous black women in varied graceful poses accompanied by titles like Longing and Trauma Bonding that offer us a window into the inner workings of her protagonists. Segun ultimately explores portraiture from a place of body sensitivity, shaping narratives around the power of vulnerability as a birthplace of joy, belonging, creativity and authenticity.